IN
THE STRENGTH OF THE MORNING
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I STAND
upon the morning’s rim,
And all life’s dream within me thrills;
I am the cup whose beaded brim
The wine of living holds or spills:
I stand upon the morning’s rim,
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| When
day grows rose and night is dim.
There comes a freshness from the floor
Of ocean and the night-bathed land;
A spirit swings each roseate door
With winnowing wings and odours bland:
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Rose
flames enkindle heaven’s floor,
And the grey mists are night no more.
I stand upon the morning’s verge,
And feel the glorious waking world;
Afar I hear life’s thundering surge
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On
morning’s beaches maddening hurled,
In flame-tinged beauty, where the verge
Of ocean sings melodious dirge.
I stand at morning’s rim and know
That all this dream of earth and sea,
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These
clouds and dreamy fields below,
This azure sphere, were made for me:
That all are mine that morn doth know,
The airs that brood, the blades that grow.
I walk in fields knee-deep in grass,
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Where
heavenward elms spread their arms;
I dream the airs of morning pass,
With voices from a hundred farms:
The bobolink rises from the grass,
Brim with the melody morning has.
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I wander by the shade of woods,
In roadways brown and wet with dew—
The great cool, leafy solitudes;
My heart grows great and lonely too,
With the large wisdom of the woods,
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| Full
of the morning’s haunted moods.
The world grows faint and far away,
As morning grows a dream at noon;
Here the great silences do pray,
With spread arms in a voiceless swoon:
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The
fields gleam out and far away
Across the hum and hush of day.
I breathe life’s airs and feel my heart
Leap into being, like a brook
That from a mountain crag doth start,
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And
falls in snowy thunders shook:
So all earth’s glories in my heart
Surge outward, nature’s counterpart.
The over-moving fields of blue,
They are the dreams that God hath spread,
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With
dews and fires of morning too,
Far out around above my head:
I feel their deep, far-lifting blue,
Shot with the morning’s radiance through.
Here in the brooding earth I dream
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The
great, high visions of the soul;
Strong like the swerved tide of the stream,
Broad like the morn’s unbroken whole:
Majestic hopes of life I dream,
Such visions great a god might deem.
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So clear the river’s eye is clear,
So strong and fresh the smell of earth,
So gladly heaven hovers near,
Great thoughts could scarcely fail of birth:
The very soul grows crystal clear,
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| Like
some pure, spring-fed mountain mere.
Out here across this wind-blown land,
Where all is great and glad and new,
I feel my spirit’s wings expand
Like eagle’s under heaven’s blue:
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Great
with the strength of sea and land,
I grasp life’s problems in my hand.
Back downward to the world I go,
Filled with the glory of earth’s light;
No demon dread can overthrow,
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No
dreams of evil e’er affright:
To battle with my fate I go,
Across the days of strife and woe.
No frosts of wintry age can chill,
No deeps of midnight swirl me down;
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The
fires of Spring my being thrill,
The dreams of morning fence me round:
By blue, blue brooks that never chill,
I climb for aye a summer hill.
I climb and listen to a song,
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Sung
by a bird at Summer’s dawn,
A song that holds no note of wrong,
Dreamed from the world where love hath gone:
I listen, listen till that song,
Like God’s voice, makes the years more strong.
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